


White Collar Prison Blues

by ishafel



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck gives Nate a ride.  S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Collar Prison Blues

SPOTTED, in Brooklyn, N. paying a duty visit. Such a good son, although he's almost too pretty to turn loose in a federal prison unprotected. And C., loitering outside. Planning a jail break or just scoping the place out in case he ends up on the inside?

He doesn't try to talk Nate out of it. If there's anything Chuck Bass knows about, it's not being able to let go of shitty fathers. He offers Nate the car and driver, but Nate won't take it. "Fine, Archibald," he says, even though it isn't fine, even though sometimes he just wishes Nate would let him help.

After Nate leaves for the subway, Brooklyn, and the Metropolitan Detention Center, Chuck goes into his father's office and sits behind Bart's desk. His father was a murderer, and probably worse, and his father is dead and buried. Chuck had someone dig him up, just to be sure, when he realized that whatever Bart had been into it hadn't been strictly business. He has papers to sign, decisions to make, board members to pacify, but he spends five minutes staring at the picture on the desk of Bart and Lily on their wedding day, and then he calls and has the car brought around after all.

He can do paperwork parked outside a prison just as easily as he can do it in an office. He isn't sure what he'll say when Nate comes out. He has a feeling visiting your father in prison isn't the kind of thing that can be made better with a couple of lines of blow and a hooker or two. He could say-- he did say to Nate-- that he wouldn't have gone if it had been his father. It wasn't true. But Bart never paid for his crimes, except with his life, and Chuck never got a second chance with him.

When Nate comes down the steps he's crying, and his nose is running, and he looks like he did when they were twelve and Mrs. Archibald caught them smoking marijuana in the poolhouse at the place in the Hamptons, and told Nate she'd never forgive him for breaking the law and blackening the family name. Chuck almost lets him get back on the bus. It would be easier.

But instead he shoves his papers back into their folder and climbs out of the car. "Nathaniel," he says. "I was just in the neighborhood--."

Nate wipes his nose on his coat sleeve and slips his sunglasses on. "You were just in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, Bass?" And he makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, to include the prison and the homeless people, the sweatshops and the crack houses and the third rate art galleries. It's very ironic and convincing, except that Chuck totally saw him crying ninety seconds ago and doesn't believe a word of it.

"You want a ride somewhere or not?" Chuck says, and Nate sighs and gets in the car. It's fifty degrees out, sunny, women in skirts and men in shirt-sleeves, but he's shivering in his peacoat with the collar turned up. There's a joint in the ashtray, already rolled, and Chuck lights it and passes it across to him. "Vanessa's?"

"No," Nate says tiredly. "Let's just go home."

He's Chuck's best friend, has been since before he could remember. Nate's house, Nate's family, were the closest thing he ever had to normal: a mom who stayed home and took care of the house, a dad who went to work and was back in time for dinner, puppies and homemade chocolate chip cookies and green lawns carefully manicured by a staff of illegal immigrants. Chuck hated him for it sometimes, and he hates himself now that all of it is gone. "Home," he says to the driver, and he means the Palace, not the Archibald house.

Nate passes the joint back after only one drag and closes his eyes and leans back against the upholstery. He either sleeps or he pretends to, and Chuck lets him. By the time they're back on the Upper East Side he's done with his work. "Archibald," he says, and touches Nate's shoulder. "We're there."

Nate jerks awake, eyelashes fluttering. "Chuck?"

"Yeah."

Nate rubs his eyes. "Jesus. I fell asleep?"

"Despite my reputation for scintillating conversation," Chuck agrees. "C'mon."

He takes Nate up to the apartment, thinking that maybe a dose of Lily will help, and that if it doesn't there's always a dose of the Johnnie Walker Blue Bart kept in his office. It's almost seven, but the apartment's deserted, not a Bass, Van der Woodsen or Humphrey in sight. Par for the course; when he wants to be alone he can't get away from them.

He pours two glasses of whiskey and slides one across the desk to Nate. "You want to talk about it?"

"I went to visit my father in prison," Nate says. "What is there to talk about?" His dark eyes are as bewildered as a baby deer's. He looks like Bambi, just after the hunters have shot Bambi's mother.

"Nathaniel," Chuck says.

"What do you want me to say?" Nate demands. "That it was horrible? That he's miserable, that he had bruises all over his face, that it's my fault that he's there and there's nothing I can do to help him?" He isn't actually crying, but his eyes are full of unshed tears. He wipes at them, angrily, with the back of his hand. "Jesus, Chuck. How am I supposed to live with that?"

"At least your father is alive," Chuck says, before he can stop himself. Nate stares at him, mouth trembling. This is so not Chuck's department. He should have waited for Lily. He should have dropped Nate at Vanessa's. He should call Serena right now, or even Blair--.

He can't. Nate is his friend. And there's one way to fix this, one way that always works for Chuck Bass. He leans over and puts his mouth on Nate's.

He isn't sure what he's expecting, but it isn't for Nate to close his eyes and lean into the kiss. He tastes like blended whiskey and he kisses like Blair, greedy and desperate, which Chuck thinks makes a certain amount of sense. He can feel Nate's tears against his cheeks, warm and damp, and the sweep of Nate's eyelashes, and then Nate's tongue in his mouth. It's no different than kissing a girl, but then, it never is. No one ever believes it, though.

He brings his right hand up behind Nate's head, uses his left to steady them both against the polished wood of his father's desk. "Nate," he says, when he can breathe. "Are you sure you want this?"  
Nate nods. "Chuck, please--."

And then he's on his knees in front of his best friend, and Nate's already got his belt undone and he's sliding his pants and his boxers toward his knees. This part is different than with a woman; there's no pretending a blow job is anything other than what it is, even if you want to. Chuck's never been much for pretending. If he can imagine it, he's probably already bought and paid for it.

This is something he'll probably pay for, too, if not with money than with Nate's friendship, and Chuck has a lot more money than he does friends. It isn't enough to stop him. He asked, which is more than he'd ordinarily have done. Nate is heavy in his mouth, warm and hard, but gentler than Chuck expected.

He hasn't done this very much, and never so close to sober. He tries not to let it mean something it doesn't. Nate is his friend, and he's doing this as a favor, and Blair would be proud of him for engaging so selflessly in charity work. Nothing impresses the Bass Industries board like altruism.

Nate's cock touches the back of Chuck's throat, and still he doesn't thrust, still he just rocks against Chuck. He's crying again and Chuck is fiercely glad that he's the one seeing this, not Vanessa. Nate wouldn't want that.

He knows, when Nate's fingers twist in his hair, what's about to happen. He lets it. He swallows, and he doesn't let himself mind, because this is Nate. Afterward Nate pulls away and zips himself up, and Chuck stays where he is, on the floor with the desk against his back.

His father's desk, and his father is dead. Sometimes it seems like Nate gets everything: Blair and then Vanessa, forgiveness and second chances, a blow job from Chuck Bass that neither of them will ever brag about.

"Are you okay?" he says finally, when he can talk again.

"Yeah," Nate says, and it's awkward again, the way things have been awkward between them for a long time, maybe forever. Maybe Chuck is imagining that they were ever more than this. "I'm good." And then he smiles at Chuck, the old Archibald smile that Chuck hasn't seen in a while, since the days of Nate-and-Blair, when the biggest decision Nate could imagine having to make was Yale or Stanford. "I'm really good. Thanks, man."

Chuck would blush, if he weren't a Bass. "You know. You'd do it for me."

"No," Nate says, considering it. "I don't think I would." But he puts out a hand and pulls Chuck to his feet, and then he bumps him with his shoulder like Chuck just scored the winning goal in a soccer game. "C'mon. Let's go to Victrola. I'll buy you a drink."

Chuck owns the whole club. His drinks are always comped. And Nate is still wearing his St. Jude's uniform, and it's not even eight o'clock on a Wednesday. But for once, Chuck Bass is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

Spotted, N. and C., blowing off steam at Victrola, and just blowing off V. Bros before hos, right, boys?


End file.
